I popped along to The Hawk Conservancy here in the UK yesterday. Its a bird of prey centre out in the countryside. It was a great day out and I thought I'd share a couple of my favourite pictures from the day.

Not seen a Bald Eagle up this close before, beautiful bird! The first one is my favourite (and in fact my favourite picture of the day).

D200, 200-400 VR at 200mm, 1/125s at f5.6, ISO 200, using fence as a support.

D200, 200-400 VR at 220mm, 1/160s at f5.6, ISO 200, fence support

D200, 200-400 VR at 220mm, 1/180s at f5.6, ISO 200, fence support

D200, 200-400 VR at 220mm, 1/160s at f5.6, ISO 200, fence support

Vulture (this thing was H.U.G.E. I think they said it had a 15 foot wingspan, and it came in and flew about 2 foot over my head!)
D200, 200-400 VR at 200mm, 1/800s at f4.5, ISO 160

A couple of Black Kites: (veru hard to expose for I was finding)

They flew 5 at the same time and at the end of the show they fired food in the air for them to catch, I manged to get 3 of them:

And an outake, heavily cropped and not very sharp:

I missed out on a superb Barn Owl taking off from a post shot, I didn't think his wings were so big and one of them just goes out of frame! Very annoying.

Still, it was a great day out and I'll be going back again. They do special photographic days where you get a guided one on one tour - think I'll give that a go at some point!

I must stop browsingt this forum. I must.
All these good photos here, they --- they --- they fill me with so much awe and make me wish so I could be as good, but... Hmph.
Might show you the pics I took in a bird park a week ago, maybe, and if only so you can get a good laugh out of them...